Niiasii A Girl Can Dream (EP), Self Release Alt-pop singer-songwriter Niiasii’s star began to rise in 2020 with “I Wanna Get Out,” from The Art of Changing Form, with more than 100,000 streams on Spotify. On her new EP, the Suffolk, Virginia, native drops four groovy, hum-worthy tunes, which she describes on Instagram as a […]
Niiasii A Girl Can Dream (EP), Self Release Alt-pop singer-songwriter Niiasii’s star began to rise in 2020 with “I Wanna Get Out,” from The Art of Changing Form, with more than 100,000 streams on Spotify. On her new EP, the Suffolk, Virginia, native drops four groovy, hum-worthy tunes, which she describes on Instagram as a […]
boygenius The Record One of the most anticipated albums of 2023, thus far, surely must be boygenius’ The Record. The band, which formed in 2018, is composed of Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, and Phoebe Bridgers. Prior to meeting in 2016, Dacus and Baker had released a few EPs and albums, while Bridgers was relatively new […]
John Kelly is a writer. Sometimes, he’s a songwriter. And with “Three Bright Stars,” he proves he’s a pretty damn good one. Best known for his work as the Virginia Film Festival’s PR pointman, Kelly has been writing for decades—penning reams of corporate communications along with songs. Before moving to Charlottesville in 2001, Kelly started […]
By Samantha Federico The live music scene is better than it’s been in the last few years, and 2022 felt like a new era for music creators, with area artists being no exception. Fewer songs are being inspired by the pandemic, and it’s back to existential quests to wring something meaningful out of this world, […]
Kingdom of Mustang Into Beautiful BlueKool Kat Musik Kingdom of Mustang delivers its fourth album, Into Beautiful Blue, as a power pop slice of nostalgia. The band is a musical collaboration between members of the popular ’80’s-era UVA group The Deal—Mark Roebuck and Michael Clarke—along with Tim Ryan, and Rusty Speidel. Stacked with decades of […]
By Samantha Federico darzo Single Cell (self-released) Adar Seligman-McComas is darzo. Over the past two years, the band had a name change and Seligman-McComas went solo, yet darzo held on to release its debut record. The eight-track, 30-minute Single Cell packs a powerful punch in a swell of horns and drums that complement Seligman-McComas’ vocals. […]
By Greg Walker Kate Bollinger Look at it in the Light, Ghostly International Look at it in the Light, Kate Bollinger’s debut release on Ghostly International, is a soul-searching expedition. “Pleases me to know I might be wrong / if only I had known it all along,” the Charlottesville, Virginia, native sings on “I Found […]
By Greg Walker Lord Nelson Transmission, Self released If Tom Petty, with his tight-gripped, loose-lipped optimism, sang about bank robberies and car crashes, drug busts and broken relationships, it would sound something like Lord Nelson on Transmission, the group’s latest 11-track offering, a project that attempts to capture the dynamic, gritty-yet-generous pre-pandemic live sound of […]
Didn’t it feel good to see that first live show after nearly a year without live music? The return of concerts this summer fall and marked one major bright spot in 2021, a year that was otherwise filled with uncertainty. (In some cases, even festivals came back!) But the pseudo-post-pandemic music scene looks much different. […]
Lowland Hum At Home, Tone Tree Music The Charlottesville-based wife/husband duo of Lauren and Daniel Goans have returned with their second quarantine-recorded album this year. (They released So Low, a reinterpretation of Peter Gabriel’s So, in May.) While So Low sought external inspiration, At Home is an intimate look inward, inspired largely by the birth […]